Environmental Assessment Index: Reliability, Stability, and Validity of the Long and Short Forms

The Environmental Assessment Index was developed to assess the educational/developmental quality of home environments of 3-year-old through 11-year-old children. The long form of Index is composed of 44 home observation and/or maternal interview items. The short form consists of 24 of the 44 items. The Index has been used to assess the quality of 62 rural children's homes in a three-year longitudinal study of ecological influences on rural children's mental and social development. The long form had a Cronbach alpha reliability of .74 and concurrent and predictive validity correlations with IQ estimates of +.66 and +.61 (p